u/10xlifes

Revenue is moving, but I have hit a challenge nobody seems to talk about.

Running summer tours in San Diego (beach activities, boat days, sunset stuff), and once you start getting traction things don't scale as smoothly as people make it sound.

At like 50 bookings a month, suppliers barely notice you. Push toward 300 in peak summer and things quietly start breaking. They pull inventory, bump prices or just go cold when you try to negotiate better rates. Had one partner literally stop replying mid convo no drama, just gone.

Promotions make it worse. You push a summer deal, demand spikes, suppliers can't keep up and when bookings fall through you are the one stuck trying to fix it. And they remember that the next time.

Even tried bringing someone in to handle supplier relationships, didn't really solve it. Suppliers still wanted to deal directly with me, so the bottleneck just followed.

Feels like the operators who figured this out are either huge already or spent years building tight relationships with a small group. Neither feels very realistic when you are in that awkward mid growth stage.

This is probably the part of being a travel agent that stresses me out the most not flights, not hotels, but tours and local experiences.

Because no matter how well i plan a trip, once a client is on the ground, the quality of their experience is suddenly in someone else’s hands. A guide I’ve never met. A company in another country. A supplier operating under completely different standards, time culture, and customer service expectations. And when something goes wrong, it doesn’t matter who actually caused it.
The client doesn’t blame the guide or the operator. They blame the person who designed the trip.

I’ve had situations where:

- a private guide didn’t show up on time
- a “small group tour” turned into a crowded bus
- an experience was shortened without explanation
- a supplier canceled the night before and stopped replying
- a tour was clearly not what had been advertised

Each time, I’m the one apologizing, rearranging, refunding, calming emotions, and trying to protect the client’s trip while also protecting my reputation. What makes it harder is that from the outside, a lot of tours look the same. Nice photos, good reviews. professional website. Quick replies at the beginning but consistency is something you only discover after bookings, after clients, after problems.

And realistically, I can’t personally test every tour in every destination. I can’t fly to Japan to vet a food tour, then to Peru to check a day trip, then to Italy to inspect private guides. But clients often assume that’s exactly what I’ve done.

Over time, this has made me much more cautious. I spend more time researching suppliers than I used to. I keep notes on which operators were smooth and which were difficult. I try to build backup options. I ask more questions before confirming anything. But even then, things still go wrong and every mistake feels personal because it affects someone’s vacation.

Sometimes i wonder:
Is there a smarter way to reduce this risk?
Are other agents building “approved” supplier lists?
Only working through certain sourcing methods?
Structuring experiences differently to protect themselves?

Because right now, the uncertainty around tours and activities is what causes me the most anxiety in this business. I’d really like to hear how other travel agents handle this side of things.